SURGING house prices, job insecurity, and no access to a deposit, means that for many it is nigh on impossible to buy a home.

The number of households who own their own homes has fallen by 200,000 since 2010, with the number of under-35s owning their homes plummeting by 344,000.

Throughout his time at Number 10 David Cameron pledged to crack the housing crisis but he went on to record the worst housebuilding record of any Prime Minister since 1923. Almost a million more households are now renting from private landlords since the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition came to power.

The problem goes back even further. Decades of failure to build has left millions with no choice but to remain stuck in expensive, unstable private renting.

The housing white paper that was announced yesterday was another missed opportunity, containing mostly tweaks to the planning system, most notably a requirement for councils to keep an up-to-date local plan. Councils across our region who already have such plans in place will be wondering what all of the fuss is about. Pledges to give them more powers to speed up developments, and require developers to use land more efficiently can be filed under “we’ll believe it when we see it” category. Currently nine in 10 planning applications are approved, but increasingly the homes are not being built as developers sit on the land waiting for prices to rise and press for more green belt to be released for development. Councils should be given the power and access to funding that revives their role as a major builder of low cost homes; borrowing to invest in housing and keeping the receipts from properties sold to reinvest in building the affordable homes that are so desperately needed.

Instead we get a feeble response to the housing crisis from a government which lacks the confidence and vision to make radical reforms.